As is known by one skilled in the art of protecting buildings and the like from damage caused by missile-like objects that are occasioned by the heavy winds of hurricanes or tornadoes, there are commercially available variations of hurricane protective devices, often called shutters, that fasten immediately over the frangible area to be protected. These devices are typically expensive to purchase, cumbersome, made from stiff, heavy material such as steel and aircraft quality aluminum alloy or occasionally plastic with reinforcing. Many need to be manually connected and then removed and stored at each threat of inclement weather. Many require unsightly and difficult-to-mount reinforcing bars at multiple locations. Further, these known shutters are usually opaque, preventing light from entering a shuttered area and preventing an inhabitant from seeing out. Likewise, it is desirable that police be able to see into buildings to check for inhabitants and to prevent looting which can be a problem in such circumstances. Missiles, even small not potentially damaging missiles, striking these heretofore known shutters create a loud, often frightening bang that is disturbing to inhabitants being protected.
Standardized testing requiring these protective devices to meet certain standards of strength and integrity has been introduced for various utilizations and locales. In order to qualify for use where said testing requirements apply, the strength and integrity characteristics of these protective devices must be predictable and must be sufficient to meet said standards. Additionally, and as is obvious to one skilled in the art, it is beneficial to qualify for said standards even in situations in which standards do not apply. As a result of said standards, many undesirable aspects of the heretofore known shutters have been acerbated. They have become more cumbersome, more bulky, heavier, more expensive, more difficult to store, and remain generally opaque and noisy when impacted. To incorporate sufficient strength to meet said requirements, weight and bulk become a problem over six feet in span. The useable span (usually height) of the heretofore known shutters that meet said standards may be limited to eight feet or less. This makes protecting large windows, for example, or groupings of windows, with the heretofore known devices cumbersome, expensive and impractical. Devices that are intended to be deployed in a roll down manner either manually, automatically, or simply by motor drive, have been difficult to strengthen sufficiently to pass the test requirements and require unsightly reinforcing bars every few feet.
Prior to the introduction of said standards, an ordinary consumer had very little useful knowledge of the strength and integrity of said shutters. It is believed shutters of the pre-standard era were very weak such that all would fail the present standardized testing. It should be understood that the standards are not intended to provide a shutter that will protect in all situations. As the hurricane conditions can be very violent and destructive, the standards are not intended to require strength and integrity sufficient to protect in all circumstances. The standards simply provide a benchmark as to strength and integrity. Said strength and integrity of the shutters can now be measured.
There are a sundry of patents that teach the utilization of knitted or woven fabric such as netting, tarpaulins, drop cloths, blankets, sheets wrapping and the like for anchoring down recreational vehicles, nurseries, loose soil and the like. But none of these are intended for, nor are capable of withstanding the forces of the missile-like objects that are carried by the wind in hurricanes. Examples where fabric or netting material that encapsulates the unit to be protected as by covering the entire unit and fastening the ends of the fabric to the ground are disclosed in the following patents. U.S. Pat. No. 3,862,876 issued to Graves, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,283,888 and 4,397,122 issued to Cros, U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,395 issued to McQuirk, U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,527 issued to Double et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,805,816 issued to Nolte, U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,184 issued to Oviedo-Reyes, U.S. Pat. No. 4,590,714 issued to Walker and U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,768 issued to Pineda. The U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,184 for example, provides a netting that fits flush over the roof of a building and uses a complicated anchoring system to tie down the netting to strengthen the building structure against hurricanes and wind storms.
Certain types of flexible material that are capable of withstanding high wind loading or impact loads without bursting, can be disposed in front of the building or other structures intended to be protected, and anchored on opposing edges, to form a curtain sufficiently spaced from the frangible area to contain the impact of foreign objects hurled by the high winds. For example, in a building the top edge of the fabric may be anchored to the eave of the roof and the bottom of the fabric may be attached to anchors imbedded in the ground or cement, so as to present a curtain adequately spaced out from and in front of the structure of the building to be protected. Not only does this afford frontal protection but, properly located and attached, it also serves to tie down the roof and protect it from blowing off. The winds that would ordinarily blow off the roof exert a force on the fabric which, in turn, exerts a downward force on the roof to act against the lifting forces tending to lift the roof.
Thus, what is lacking in the art is a flexible protective barrier constructed from a mesh material that can be easily stored and deployed for protecting the frangible portion of a structure from objects carried by the wind.